Obama: Promises, Promises

Struggling to Conclude Settlement Freeze Pact -Crispian Balme

Talks between Israeli and U.S. officials aimed at reviving Middle East peace negotiations have hit snags over incentives promised by Washington to persuade Israel to resume a freeze of Jewish settlement building. An Israeli official said the U.S. appeared reluctant to commit to paper all the promises Netanyahu says he was offered verbally last week.

Netanyahu's coalition allies demanded a written pledge from the U.S. to make clear the building freeze did not include east Jerusalem and to spell out there would be no U.S. pressure for any subsequent moratoria.

The Israeli official said there appeared to be a disconnect between the White House and State Department, with Obama unhappy that Clinton had offered so much.
(Reuters)


U.S. Statement on East Jerusalem Hard to Come By -Tovah Lazaroff

[F]ormer American ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer said [that] it was highly unlikely that a clear written commitment would be made.
(Jerusalem Post)


Settlement Subtleties -Gil Troy

Reducing the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the settlements is an act of historical vandalism, defaming the memory of nearly 30,000 Israelis, very few of whom died in settlement-related violence - most of whom died because of the continuing Arab refusal to accept Israel's existence. Obsessing about the settlements blames Israel while absolving the Palestinians of responsibility. It is a form of racism, condescendingly treating the Palestinians as if they are not accountable for their deeds and words.

It ignores the fact that Israel withdrew from 25 settlements in Gaza and Samaria in 2005, then endured thousands of rocket attacks and a Gaza takeover by Hamas, whose charter targets the entire Jewish state - and the Jewish people. It overlooks the fact that when Yasser Arafat led his people away from the Oslo negotiations back toward terror in 2000, Palestinians blew up Jerusalem buses, Tel Aviv felafel stands and Haifa cafes, treating all of Israel as a "settlement."

Traditionally, when countries fight, the winner keeps the territory. I challenge my historian colleagues to name one example when a country won a defensive war, then voluntarily returned the territory it conquered, if it had a prior claim to the land.
The writer is professor of history at McGill University and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
(Jerusalem Post)
*